FAQ About Decorating Cookies with Buttercream
Buttercream sugar cookies are becoming more and more popular and who’s to blame? Buttercream sugar cookies are soft, perfectly sweet, and super cute!
Many people, including myself, find buttercream cookie decorating to be easier than royal icing. There’s only one consistency of frosting, no dry time between layers, and you can do many of the same techniques with buttercream as royal icing.
As a cookie decorator for about five years now, I’ve seen lots of FAQ about decorating cookies with buttercream as their popularity rises.
Let’s go over these questions and answers so you can feel confident either making buttercream sugar cookies yourself or finding custom buttercream cookies in your area.
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- How-To & Tutorial FAQ Questions About Decorating Cookies with Buttercream
- How do you decorate cookies with buttercream instead of royal icing?
- How do you smooth buttercream for a background?
- What buttercream recipe is best for cookie decorating?
- How do you keep buttercream from melting or smudging on cookies?
- Can you pipe detailed designs with buttercream?
- How long do buttercream cookies take to dry or set?
- Recipe & Ingredient Questions
- Tools & Supplies FAQ About Decorating Cookies with Buttercream
- Ordering Questions
- Save FAQ About Decorating Cookies with Buttercream for Later
How-To & Tutorial FAQ Questions About Decorating Cookies with Buttercream
If you’re looking to get started on decorating cookies with buttercream yourself, you may have asked yourself these questions.
This is a simple task! You will have the same sugar cookie base (although I like to roll my cookies 3/8″ inch for buttercream cookies rather than 1/4″) but will just need to prepare buttercream rather than royal icing.
Preparing buttercream is easier in that only one consistency is needed. Make one batch of crusting buttercream then divvy it up into bowls to color and bag them. No counting seconds necessary!
As far as tools, you will likely want piping tips rather than using tipless bags. Don’t worry, the bags are the same, tipless just means you aren’t placing a tip inside of the bag.
Piping tips allow for clearer lines that just simply cutting the piping bag. Here is my favorite set of beginner piping tips that allows you to make endless designs.
Simply pipe your design onto the cookie as you would royal icing. If you don’t know how to get started without a flooded background, see my next question below.
Let your cookies air dry for about 24 hours until they form an outer crust.
If you are interested in a low-cost beginner buttercream sugar cookie decorating course, check mine out here!
How do you smooth buttercream for a background?
If you are coming from the royal icing community, you are familiar with starting the cookie with a smooth background surface.
Traditional buttercream sugar cookies use the back & forth linework as a background but creating a smooth background is easy!
One of the best ways to smooth buttercream as a beginner is by pretending you are smoothing a cake. Pipe on a layer of frosting using the back & forth method and place the cookie into the freezer. After about 10 minutes, remove the cookie and smooth out the frosting using an angled flat spatula or palette knife.
For more, check out my post on two more ways to smoothing buttercream sugar cookies.
Alternatively, you can use rolled buttercream to create a smooth background. This does mean you need to make two batches of buttercream, so I personally tend to skip this route, but it is popular for a quick flat background.
You will want to use a crusting buttercream recipe. This means you will have a high amount of sugar to fat ratio, which not only acts as a preservative, but also creates an outer crust once the frosting has dried.
This outer crust protects your designs so you can package and transport buttercream sugar cookies.
You’ll love my vanilla sugar cookie recipe and crusting buttercream recipe.
There are three possible issues here: your cookies are hot, your buttercream is hot, and/or you aren’t using a crusting buttercream recipe.
Make sure your cookies are completely cooled before you add buttercream. Buttercream has, you guessed it, butter in it so it can melt when placed on something hot.
If your buttercream is too hot, this is likely from holding the icing bag in your hand for too long with warm hands. To combat this, place your buttercream into multiple icing bags so you can switch between them as you work.
It is important to use a crusting buttercream (see the question above) which has a higher sugar volume than regular buttercream. The sugar will help prevent the buttercream from being too soft and melting.
Can you pipe detailed designs with buttercream?
Yes! Have you ever seen a textured painting and the details just blew you away? Working with buttercream is similar to working with textured paint.
You want to add your details with texture. Typically, with royal icing, you would add details using the wet-on-wet technique.
With buttercream, you’ll want to think outside of that. For instance, can you add florals (buttercream flowers are the best!), ruffles, or a basket weave?
If you want to add details that look like a wet-on-wet technique check out how I did a polka dot design for my daughter’s birthday cookies.
Buttercream cookies have an outer crust formed after about 8 hours but take about 24 hours to fully dry. If you live in a more humid area, it can take closer to 36 hours to dry.
You do not need to wait for layers to dry as you do for royal icing. So if you create a background and detail work on top, you only have to wait once (at the end) for the cookie to dry.
You can eat them right away if necessary; however, I highly suggest waiting 24 hours as the buttercream will soak into the sugar cookie and create a softer cookie!
Recipe & Ingredient Questions
Yes, especially since you will not need meringue powder. Here is my egg free sugar cookie recipe that I’ve heard is actually better tasting than my recipe with egg!
You want to use an American crusting buttercream recipe for your cookies. Swiss and Italian, while delicious, will not set enough for cookie decorating. Save those for cakes!
Please DO NOT refrigerate your buttercream sugar cookies! Refrigeration can cause the cookies to dry out.
Buttercream sugar cookies are shelf-stable due to the high sugar content in the crusting buttercream. You can store cookies in an airtight container for several days at room temperature.
If you need to store your cookies for longer, place them in an air tight container and freeze the cookies for up to three months. Defrost by pulling the container out of the fridge and placing it on the counter with the lid still on. Cookies should be defrosted in about thirty minutes.
Since decorating cookies can take quite some time, you may be inclined to start early. The good news is that buttercream sugar cookies keep very well.
If you don’t want to worry about freezing your cookies, you can make them up to three days in advance and keep them in an air tight container on the counter after they’ve formed a crust.
Here’s my favorite air tight container:
If you don’t mind freezing your cookies, you can fully decorate them about three months prior to the event. Just make sure to freeze them in air tight containers and then defrost them in the container, with the lid on, on the counter.
Yes! Here is my gluten free sugar cookie recipe. While I do not have a vegan cookie recipe, here is a popular cut out vegan sugar cookie recipe from another recipe creator.
To make a vegan buttercream, simply use water as your liquid and vegetable shortening for your butter. Here’s an easily adaptable buttercream recipe.
Tools & Supplies FAQ About Decorating Cookies with Buttercream
If you are going to make your own buttercream sugar cookies, here are some FAQ about decorating cookies with buttercream as far as supplies and tools go.
Piping Tips
There are a lot of tips out there and all of them have been great for me so far. I will say, the majority of the tips I own are Wilton tips.
That being said, I also enjoy the GG Cakraft tips for florals and the PME & Ateco tips are also great. Ateco can sometimes be cheaper than Wilton. PME makes my favorite small detail tip: the 1.5 PME.
Michaels also carries the Celebrate It line of decorating tips.
The main things you want to pay attention to are:
- Do the tip sizes I am going to use fit with the couplers I own?
- Some coupler brands don’t mix well with different branded piping tips. It’s best to stick with one brand of couplers and piping tips in the beginning until you have a chance to experiment with others. What’s a coupler? Check out my question & answer below.
- Are the tip sizes standard size or jumbo size?
- For cookie decorating, you will usually use the standard sized piping tips. These are smaller while the jumbo sizes are typically for cakes. There are some exceptions, for instance using a 1M piping tip to pipe rosettes onto cookies. For more info on jumbo tips, check out my rosette post.
- What designs does each tip offer?
- Some brands have numbering that is similar to others. For instance, Ateco tends to use the same number system as Wilton tips. However, some brands are completely different so it is important to look up what the piping tip is designed to do rather than assume it is the style you think it will be based off of the number.
Piping Bags
My absolute favorite piping bag is the 12″ disposable piping bags by Wilton. In the five plus years of cookie decorating, I have only had a bag burst on me once. I fully believe it was just a defective bag.
So out of the hundreds of Wilton bags I’ve used, I’ve had less than a half percent chance of a bag bursting.
What is a coupler?
Couplers are typically only used in buttercream cookie decorating and not royal icing. A coupler goes into the piping bag rather than the piping tip. The piping tip is then screwed onto the coupler from the outside of the bag.
The coupler therefore allows you to change tips for each color used. For instance, if you have a cookie with a white background and white detail work, you can place a larger tip, such as the Wilton #5, on the bag to do the background and then change it to a smaller PME 1.5 tip to do the detail work.
Yes and no. You can decorate drop cookies (for instance snickerdoodle, chocolate chip, etc.) with buttercream. However, most people think of cut out sugar cookies for cookie decorating. Cut out cookies allow for a smooth surface and the ability to decorate shapes.
Here’s my most loved cut out sugar cookie recipe and here’s a fun one that also has great reviews!
Yes! Just as you can airbrush a buttercream cake you can airbrush buttercream sugar cookies.
Ordering Questions
If you want to skip making your own buttercream sugar cookies you may have some questions on ordering buttercream sugar cookies.
You can always check local bakeries but I would suggest finding a cottage baker to make them. Cottage bakers are more likely to create custom cookies.
To find a cottage baker near you, check your social media channels. You can go to your local community group on Facebook and do a search for sugar cookies. You will probably see some recommended cottage bakers in your area! If not, simply ask the group if anyone knows where you can get custom sugar cookies.
Once you get a recommendation from Facebook, go to Instagram (or search Facebook pages) and see if that cottage baker has a page. There, you can see some of their work and style to see if it is what you envisioned.
Buttercream sugar cookies are going to cost quite a bit, as they are a luxury item and take a long time to decorate. Rather than just paying for the materials, you are also paying for the decorator’s time and experience.
Depending on the baker’s expertise and price point, you should expect to pay anywhere from $3.50 a cookie to $8.00 a cookie. Most bakers only allow you to purchase by the dozen, so expect $42 to $96 for 12 cookies.
If this is out of your price range, consider learning how to decorate buttercream sugar cookies yourself. It’s quite fun!
Yes, if you are a hobby baker and want to make some cookies and ship it to some friends or family as a gift you totally can. Allow the cookies to dry fully, then package them with plenty of protection.
If you are a licensed cottage baker, you need to check your state laws. My state of Washington does not allow for cookies to be purchased and then shipped to the buyer.
Long story short, no. Character cookies and logos are copyright protected. If you want to pay for the copyright then you can see if the bakery feels comfortable doing them. Some bakeries may have designs they have paid the copyright for so you can always ask.
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